5 International Beauty Routines, Tried By One Intrepid Writer

Five countries, hundreds of creams, and one very willing writer: Loren Savini copies (and we mean down to every last balm and blush) the skin, hair, and makeup habits of some of the most stylish, product-loving women on the planet.

The Indian Naturalist

Rasika Navare (left) is a model who grew up in Pune, a city in the western state of Maharashtra.

“I find myself drawn to natural products; I guess my Indian heritage has something to do with that. In a traditional Indian household, it’s
common to use products from the kitchen in the beauty regimen, like honey, turmeric, and yogurt. My current beauty routine consists of
Neal’s Yard Remedies Palmarosa Facial Wash, a dab of rose-hip oil, and a rose-vetiver moisturizer. And you must let your skin breathe by staying off makeup whenever you can.”

Rasika Navare smells amazing. I mean, I don’t know for sure because we’ve never met in person, but between the rose oil and the rose cream and the rose balm, I’d wager she does. Navare’s daily routine consists mainly of products with natural ingredients—papaya, shea butter, almond oil. This sounds nice and all, but honestly? Ingredients be damned: If it works, I’m on board. Natural, organic, and botanical products are pretty far off my radar. But it takes one morning at my sink washing my face with a palmarosa cleanser, toning with a rose-and-geranium spray, and massaging rose-hip oil into my skin to convert me.

Not only do I smell like the queen (if she moisturized with Evan Healy Rose Vetiver cream, which, maybe), but my skin feels— for apparently the first time in a long time—really, really clean. And healthy. And glowing. It makes me want to sign up for Bikram yoga and turn all of my food to juice (I do neither of these things). The impulse to grab my concealer is completely gone, not because my undereye circles have gone anywhere, but because I don’t want to ruin this awesome high. Throughout the day, I dip into Navare’s favorite sweet, fragrant, all-purpose beauty tool—Neal’s Yard Remedies Wild Rose Beauty Balm—to banish dry spots and use as lip balm and also surreptitiously huff at my desk when I get stressed. I’m telling you: This stuff smells good.

The South Korean Cleanser

Claudia Kim (center) is a model and actress from Seoul.

“The most effort is put into achieving good, smooth skin—cleansing rituals, daily masks, facial massages to achieve a smaller face. Believe it or not, Koreans are also pretty keen on this: ‘Your face is so small!’ is a compliment that is often used.”

I’m not sure where I land on the face-size scale. I’m looking in the mirror, and it seems like an average-size face to me...but compared
with what, exactly? A baby? A baby face is a pretty small face. But unless I find a way to Benjamin Button myself, I think my small, infant face is decidedly a thing of the past. Plus, I had really chubby cheeks as a baby. I kind of dig my defined adult cheekbones, to be perfectly honest.

. I’ve never been a fan of slathering my face in oil (I have teen-acne PTSD), but OK, I’ll admit, this made my face feel baby-soft. But smaller? No. Cleanser number three is La Roche-Posay Effaclar Purifying Foaming Gel. Great. But my face does not appear smaller, and I write the whole thing off. But here’s where things get freaky. After a few days of this cleanse-on-cleanse-on-cleanse, something changes. I’m
getting carded at bars and restaurants and—this is true—one R-rated movie. I laugh at the woman tearing tickets when she asks for my ID. “Wow. I haven’t been carded for a movie in a long time,” I say. She frowns and says: “Honestly, I thought you were 16,” which means that she thought I was over a decade younger than I am. “You have really nice skin.” I want to ask if she would call my face small, but that seems kind of serial-killer-y, so I decide to take the compliment and triple-cleanse again that night.

The Russian Perfectionist

Olga Karput (right) is the founder and owner of Kuznetsky Most 20, a concept store in Moscow.

“Women in Russia tend to care a lot about how they look, so we are used to caring for our bodies, skin, and hair from a very young age. One needs to stay healthy and good-looking! And you need time every day to do all of that. First you make a green juice. Then I suggest you
do yoga or any kind of sport that makes you feel good. Then shower, self-massage, lotions, masks, oils—only after that are you ready for a new day.”

When I ask Karput for her daily routine, her instructions come in the form of six emails—one each for hair, body, face, makeup, vitamins, and perfumes. The final count is 60 products, give or take. This is an Olympic-level morning. Like, you know how Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day? This is that, but with no pancakes or pasta. Karput is so infuriatingly stunning, I begrudgingly set my alarm two hours earlier than usual because whatever she’s doing, it’s working. But two hours turns out to be conservative.

Her Eve Lom cleansing balm alone is a Da Vinci Code of complicated steps involving three different water temperatures and several waves of muslin-cloth scrubbing. She does one or two masks. Every. Single. Morning. They include Biologique Recherche’s syrupy Masque Vivant (which smells like molasses, tar, and orphan tears but promises ageless skin—I suffer dutifully) and a series of collagen and silicone sheet masks, some of which, of course, must be followed by a spring-water spray and ampoules because what is beauty if it doesn’t come with an instruction manual that puts Moby Dick to shame? Her skin-care products are also frontline aggressive, and I bail on a handful of them when it starts to feel like I’m scorching the nerves in my face. Two hours after waking up, I’m still smoothing David Mallett hair serum into my split ends with one hand and reading the back of a bottle of magnesium supplements (and omegas, silica, vitamin D...on and on until you die of old age, standing there in your underwear).

Karput’s makeup looks simple, but by the time I’ve made it through the shower and the skin care and moved on to the

, the Becca Beach Tint, the kaleidoscope of metallic Giorgio Armani cream shadows, and the spritz of D.S. & Durga’s smoky (and I mean burn-the-house-down smoky) Mississippi Medicine—I’m exhausted. But the compliments on my glowing face are better than coffee. And really, who needs rest when you have the Russian secret to eternal dewiness?

The French Minimalist

“My routine in the morning is a coffee on my terrace with a beautiful Paris view. For me, excess of foundation, blush, and lipstick means too many things to be hidden.”

I’ve officially had it with the effortless-French-beauty cliché. So I try my best to be unimpressed when I get my hands on Dhelens’s moisturizers and her makeup product of choice: Cherry Blooms Brush On Fiber Lashes. Her entire stock is in eyelashes. No foundation, no concealer, no lipstick—just eyelashes. And the lashes these fibers create really project to the balcony. They are so long, in fact, that I’m positive when I blink, a chilly wind sweeps across the city. And despite the fact that not wearing any other makeup kind of gives me indigestion, the superhuman lashes feel like more than enough. I don’t even mind it when black fibers start to settle on my cheeks throughout the day. What remains is still flirty and sexy and feminine, and I feel (damn it!) effortless.

The Risk Taker: Kenya

“Kenyan makeup culture is still young, but we love bold, transformative looks. My mom prefers that I not wear any makeup, but this is what I love; I can still wash it off at the end of the day.”

"Bold, transformative looks.” You don’t know what that means, either, do you? I repeat this out loud to myself a few times, picturing turquoise eye shadows and neon lipsticks. Bold means risky, right? But when Mwai’s favorite products arrive at my desk, everything becomes clear. Her foundation is intensely opaque. One sweep of the highlighter she uses is sparkling; two practically turns your cheeks to gilded metal. Bold doesn’t mean avant-garde. It means that Mwai prefers to use makeup to really accentuate her features—she has to be photo-ready
for her blog, after all. She has dark, face-framing eyebrows that she creates with an Anastasia Beverly Hills pomade so saturated that it quickly becomes a full-fledged crisis for me. On Mwai, it looks pristine and powerful; on me, it overtakes my face—no, my existence. I am only eyebrows. I may not be used to seeing these exaggerated features on my face, but sure enough, selfie-me does look pretty glamorous.